The liberal strategy of simply exposing Trump’s lies, pointing to his preposterously unscripted oratory, and hoping to convey some sort of “truth” as antidote to his base misses the point. Trump’s brand of populism has sutured “the people” to the interests of big capital.

The vast tailings of South Africa’s gold and copper mines have given rise to an informal scavenger economy. What many see as waste, the immigrant laborers of the mine dumps see as a vital source of income.

The Berkeley Journal of Sociology is run by a collective of graduate students from the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. It seeks to contribute to the “history of the present” by publishing critical sociological perspectives on current social, economic, political, and environmental issues.